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T he idea for a player draft was actually triggered by an incident that occurred in 1933. That’s when Bert Bell telephoned Stanley Kostka, an outstanding Minnesota fullback and linebacker, at his home in Minneapolis. “I asked him point blank if he would sign with the Eagles if I came out there and offered him a contract for more money than anyone else in the league would give him,” Bell told the Associated Press years later.“He said yes. So in the situation, I went to Minneapolis. We met in a hotel. I asked him how much he had been offered by other clubs. He told me the top was $3,500. I’ll give you $4,000, I told him. But Kostka hemmed and hawed, said he had to think it over, give my offer more serious consideration. I told him to take an hour to make up his mind. Actually in the situation, I knew what was in his mind. He wanted to get to a telephone and call the club (Brooklyn) which had offered him $3,500 to see if they’d top my offer. Apparently, he couldn’t make the connection because when he came back, he still hadn’t made up his mind. I told him, look, I’ll give you $6,000 if you’ll sign now and let me go home. He hedged. So I left.” Bell said that he thought about the Kostka situation all the way home. (Kostka eventually played one season for Brooklyn.) “I made up my mind that this league would never survive unless we had some system whereby each team had an even chance to bid for talent against the other,” Bell explained to the AP. In the years before the draft and for almost a decade afterward, four teams—the Bears, Giants, Packers, and Redskins—dominated the NFL. They were the only teams drawing respectable crowds and making money. Every other franchise was awash in red ink and some were on the verge of going out of business. Between 1933 and 1946, the Giants, Bears, and Packers won the title nine times among them. Between 1932 and 1943, George Halas guided the Bears to four league championships and seven appearances in the title game. 10. The Player Draft Comes in 1936 The Player Draft Comes in 1936 • 57 Meanwhile, Bell’s Eagles were getting killed. After finishing 2–9 in 1935 and taking over as head coach to cut expenses, Bell set out to convince his fellow owners that only an equitable player draft could save the league from going out of business. Finally after some vigorous politicking and arm-twisting, Bell introduced his unique proposal at the league meetings at the Fort Pitt Hotel in Pittsburgh on May 18, 1935. He was, wrote columnist Arthur Daley in the New York Times, “probably the only man who then had sublime faith in the draft as the salvation of pro football.” At the meeting, Bell addressed the other eight club owners. “Gentlemen ,” he said, “I’ve always had the theory that pro football is like a chain. The league is no stronger than its weakest link and I’ve been a weak link for so long that I should know. Every year, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Four teams control the championships, the Giants and Redskins in the East, the Bears and Packers in the West. Because they are successful , they keep attracting the best college players in the open market— which makes them more successful. “Here’s what I propose. At the end of every college football season, I suggest that we pool the names of all eligible seniors. Then we make our selections in inverse order of the standings, with the lowest team picking first until we reach the top-ranking team, which picks last. We do this for round after round until we’ve exhausted the supply.” Some club owners, especially Halas, still weren’t convinced. “At a distance,” wrote Bob Carroll of the Professional Football Researchers Association, the Chicago Bears owner “seems to have been almost schizophrenic about the draft. While having only one team bid for the services of a player was a good way to keep salaries under control, an idea that Halas could embrace wholeheartedly, the ultimate result—if all went according to the script—would eventually be to cycle chronic losers like Bell’s Eagles to the top of the standings and push annual winners...

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